The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

about 2 months ago
News

Canva acquires Doohly for $30M, adds DOOH to platform

Canva acquired Melbourne-based Doohly for $30M, adding digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising to its platform. The deal means Canva now handles everything from design creation to physical billboard placement. Doohly, founded in 2020 by Sean Law and Tom Sawkins, runs a cloud-based platform managing digital billboards and retail screens. The company operates across ANZ and UK, with clients including KX Pilates, Mobil, Rebel Sport, and Liquorland. Previous raise: $650K from Archangel Ventures and Skalata. ## What It Means for Enterprise Sales Canva is building an end-to-end marketing platform play. Design tools brought in SMBs. DOOH capabilities target enterprise clients with physical retail presence. Worth noting: this is acquisition number six in two years, following Affinity and Leonardo in 2024. For sales teams selling into retail or physical locations, Canva just became a more complete solution. Previously, you designed in Canva, then exported to a separate DOOH platform. Now it is one workflow. ## The Numbers Law owns nearly 50% of Doohly, Skalata around 17%, Sawkins 14%. At $30M exit, that is $15M+ for Law, $5M+ for Skalata, $4M+ for Sawkins. Not bad for a company that raised $650K. Doohly was serving 4 billion+ creatives across 100+ networks in 13 countries. Client count grew from 11 to 19 since mid-2023. Lean operation, tech-driven revenue model. ## ANZ Context Second Melbourne adtech exit in recent memory. Doohly had strong ANZ partnerships: LUMOS in Australia, HYPER in New Zealand (500+ retail locations). Canva gets immediate local market access without building infrastructure from scratch. No word yet on Doohly team integration or whether Law and Sawkins stay on. Standard acquisition playbook suggests product gets absorbed, founders stick around for 12-18 months, then move on. This matters if you are selling design tools, martech, or advertising platforms. Canva keeps adding capabilities. They are not staying in their lane.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Cauldron closes $13.25M Series A2, no sales team disclosed

## The Numbers Cauldron, an Orange NSW biotech, closed a $13.25 million Series A2 led by Main Sequence Ventures. Total funding now sits at roughly $26 million across seed ($10.5M in 2023) and Series A ($9.5M in 2024). The company develops continuous precision fermentation tech that cuts costs 30-50% versus traditional batch methods. Applications span food, agriculture, biofuels, cosmetics, and chemicals. ## What We Don't Know No public data on: - Sales team size or structure - Recent hires or hiring plans - CRO, VP Sales, or senior go-to-market roles - Compensation ranges for any roles - Revenue numbers or ARR For a company citing "faster-than-expected demand" and planning multi-facility expansion, the absence of sales org details is notable. Either they are not hiring yet, or the information is not public. ## The Context Cauldron runs a 25,000-litre facility in Orange, acquired via seed funding from CEO Michele Stansfield's prior firm Agritechnology (which included 35 years of R&D). Plans include a 500,000-litre facility and a network of plants across regional Australia. The company holds Australia's first 10,000-litre gene tech licence for scale testing. Fast Company named them among Asia-Pacific's most innovative companies this week. ## What This Means for Sales Pros Biotech startups at this stage typically build commercial teams post-Series A, especially when citing customer demand. If Cauldron starts hiring AEs or business development roles, expect: - Technical sales requirements (bioprocessing knowledge) - Long sales cycles (industrial contracts) - Enterprise deal sizes - Regional NSW or Sydney-based roles Worth tracking if you are looking at early-stage deep tech sales. Just do not expect comp transparency yet. **Series B equity note:** At $26M raised, Cauldron sits between Series A and B. Early-stage biotech comp typically skews toward equity over cash, with OTE structures less common than tech SaaS roles until commercial traction is proven.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Mr Yum CEO on merger reality: integration costs, nervous customers, profitability

When Mr Yum and me&u merged in November 2023, plenty of people quietly assumed it would fail. Kim Teo, now CEO of the combined entity, says the scepticism was not irrational. The first year looked ugly on paper. Integration costs were significant. The company carried a loss that doubters pointed to as proof. But Teo says the real work was not about the balance sheet: it was about keeping focus while everything changed. ## The merger reality Two rival hospitality tech firms, both based in ANZ (Mr Yum in Melbourne, me&u in Sydney), merged via all-stock deal. The combined entity now processes over $2 billion in annual dining transactions across 6,000+ food brands. It operates under the me&u brand with Teo as CEO. The first year priorities: customer migration, systems integration, team consolidation. Not glamorous. Expensive. Teo describes it as the "hard, unsexy work" that sets up the next phase. ## What they actually did No major changes during peak trading seasons. Focus on continuity of product, support, and platform. The goal: avoid disrupting customers while integrating two sales organisations that had competed fiercely for four years. Teo does not sugarcoat the challenge. Integration costs hit hard. Customers were nervous. The work was messy. But the alternative, she implies, was staying separate while burning resources on competition. ## Sales team implications The article does not detail sales team sizes, comp structures, or how many roles were consolidated. That is the transparency gap in most merger coverage: lots of talk about "culture" and "focus," not enough about what happened to the teams doing the selling. What we know: the merger aimed to build a "super product" and scale innovation. What we do not know: how many AEs, SDRs, or AMs lost roles, what the comp looked like post-merger, or how territories were redrawn. For sales professionals watching merger news, Teo's advice centers on focus and culture, not the operational details that determine whether your role survives integration. Worth noting for anyone evaluating a company mid-merger: ask about the roadmap, but also ask about quota relief, territory changes, and what "integration" actually means for your patch.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Australia's AI edge: Data-rich industries, not frontier models

Australia's AI advantage sits in data-rich industries, not building the next ChatGPT competitor. That is the view from Lee Hickin, executive director of the National AI Centre, speaking at ARM Hub's Propel-AIR 2.0 robotics accelerator in Brisbane. "Where does Australia have data and insights and knowledge that is unique to us," Hickin told SmartCompany. The answer: mining, agriculture, healthcare, and other sectors where ANZ companies already own proprietary datasets that global players cannot easily replicate. While governments pour billions into sovereign AI capability and tech giants build data centres, Hickin argues the local edge is not in frontier model development. It is in sector-specific applications where Australia has decades of domain expertise and unique data sources. ## What this means for sales teams For sales professionals selling AI tools in Australia, this matters. The buyers are not chasing general-purpose models. They want tools that solve specific problems in industries where Australia actually leads. Salesforce pushed AI certifications hard in 2024. The Australian market response: cautious adoption in finance and retail, stronger uptake in resources and agriculture where the data story resonates. AI sales automation tools from Australian vendors are gaining traction because they understand local compliance and industry workflows. The comp play: Enterprise AEs selling industry-specific AI solutions in mining or agriculture are seeing stronger close rates than those pitching generic automation. Territory assignments are shifting to vertical specialisation. If you are carrying an AI quota in 2026, knowing the difference between frontier models and applied AI is table stakes. Australia's AI market is projected to exceed AUD 80 billion annually by 2033. The government committed AUD 2.5 billion through its National AI Plan. But the sales opportunity is not in competing with OpenAI. It is in tools that leverage Australia's unique industry data and expertise. Worth noting: 68% of Australian businesses have moved AI from pilot to production. That is higher than most markets. The buyers are ready, but they want solutions that fit local industries, not generic automation promises.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Silicon Quantum Computing lands $20M NRF funding, no sales team details

## SQC adds $20M, still R&D-heavy Silicon Quantum Computing closed $20 million from the National Reconstruction Fund via SAFE note. The cash funds production scaling for quantum processing units and Watermelon, its quantum machine learning product. The investment is part of an ongoing round. No total raise amount disclosed. SQC has pulled in $280 million since 2017, including $83 million in seed from Australian government, UNSW, Telstra, and Commonwealth Bank. ## The revenue picture SQC reports "millions of AUD" in revenue from two products: Watermelon (quantum ML) and Quantum Twins (molecular simulation). They are targeting commercial-scale error-corrected quantum computers by 2033. Worth noting: that is a seven-year timeline in a market where timelines tend to slip. The company employs around 90 to 100 people. Breakdown: 70-plus technical staff, 20 commercial. No CRO. No VP Sales. No sales team size disclosed. For a B2B play targeting multinationals in defense, pharma, finance, telecoms, energy, and materials, that is a light commercial footprint. ## What this means for ANZ tech sales SQC operates as Australia's quantum computing champion: full-stack development from atomic manufacturing to software, fabricating chips at UNSW Sydney labs. CEO Michelle Simmons (2018 Australian of the Year) runs a research-first operation competing against IBM and Rigetti on silicon spin qubit technology. The sales angle: SQC sells via cloud and hardware deals to enterprise clients. But the org structure tilts heavily toward R&D. If you are tracking quantum computing sales roles in ANZ, this is not where the action is yet. The $20 million goes to production capacity, not go-to-market expansion. Funding rounds like this signal government backing and long-term potential. They do not signal near-term sales hiring. SQC's 2033 commercialisation target puts it in the "strategic partnership" phase, not the "build out an enterprise sales team" phase. ## The comp reality No sales roles posted. No comp data. If SQC does hire sales, expect it to look more like technical account management or strategic partnerships than traditional quota-carrying AE roles. Quantum computing sales at this stage means educating C-suite on seven-year roadmaps, not closing quarterly deals.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Cuttable raises $5.7M, doubles valuation to $100M, opens New York office

**Cuttable closed a $5.7 million round at a $100 million valuation, doubling from its August 2025 raise.** The Melbourne AI ad tech startup is opening a New York office after US demand reached 50% of inbound enquiries. Square Peg and Rampersand increased their stakes. AirTree, Glitch Capital, and Benjamin Duncan joined. Total raised: $16 million across three rounds in 18 months. **CEO Sam Kroonenburg** sold his previous company, A Cloud Guru, for $2 billion in 2021. He cofounded Cuttable in 2023 with Jack White (Sunday Gravy) and Ed Ring (former Swisse marketer). The platform automates ad production, testing, and iteration for performance marketing teams. Client base: 200 brands across ANZ and US. Recent programme data: 13x return on ad spend. Notable clients include Catch (Wesfarmers), Nando's, and Powershop. **Why this matters for sales teams:** Cuttable is automating creative workflows, similar to how Clay and other AI sales tools automate prospecting. Performance marketing teams are the buyers here. If you are selling into marketing or ad tech, watch how fast AI is eliminating manual work in adjacent functions. Same pattern: AI automates grunt work, teams get smaller, buying decisions consolidate. The New York expansion follows demand, not ambition. When 50% of inbound comes from one market, you go there. Worth noting: Kroonenburg has done this before. A Cloud Guru hit similar inflection points before the $2B exit. **Funding timeline:** - July 2024: $5.5M seed (Square Peg) - August 2025: $4.5M seed extension, $44.5M valuation - March 2026: $5.7M, $100M valuation Valuation more than doubled in seven months. That pace suggests strong unit economics or aggressive growth targets. The company is hiring in Melbourne and staffing New York. Kroonenburg compared Cuttable's current stage to A Cloud Guru at similar traction: strong product, customers pulling into new markets, fast-moving team. If the pattern holds, this is early innings.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

IREN hits $17B: Aussie founders pivot Bitcoin miner to AI infra

## The Pivot IREN (formerly Iris Energy) started as a Bitcoin mining operation in 2018. Founders Daniel and Will Roberts, both ex-Macquarie Group, pitched renewable-powered data centres locally. The ASX rejected them. They listed on Nasdaq instead. The 2022 crypto crash crushed the stock 95%. Debtholders nearly took the company. But in 2023, the brothers pivoted hard: Bitcoin mining plus AI data centres. They bought 9,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips. Stock is up 300% this year. Market cap: $17 billion. That would make them the 37th largest company on the ASX, except they are not on the ASX. ## The Numbers Revenue up 168% year-on-year. Net profit: $86 million. The company raised $205 million in equity before the IPO. Recent executive adds include Anthony Lewis as CFO (focus: aggressive capital raising) and David Shaw as COO (focus: physical infrastructure). The co-founders each cashed out $33 million recently, selling one million shares as the stock hit record highs. They remain co-CEOs. ## The Australia Problem IREN has zero facilities in Australia. All operations moved to Texas. The brothers cited regulatory barriers and slow tech infrastructure adaptation. Sydney headquarters, Texas operations. This mirrors a broader pattern: Australian founders building infrastructure businesses offshore because local markets move too slowly on data centre approvals and energy policy. ## What It Means IREN competes in two markets: Bitcoin mining (where it is now the world's most valuable public miner) and AI data centres (where those Nvidia chips matter). The company positions as renewable-energy-powered high-performance computing. The AI thesis is driving valuations across the data centre space. IREN's 300% gain this year tracks similar moves in infrastructure plays. Whether that holds depends on AI compute demand staying strong, not just hype. For sales teams selling into this sector: the money is real, the budgets are large, and the buying cycle has compressed. Enterprise AEs covering infrastructure, energy, or hardware should be tracking these plays closely. This is where the procurement action is happening right now.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

AI AEs outperform humans on product knowledge, not trust

## The Trust Objection Does Not Hold The most common pushback to AI account executives: buyers only trust humans. The reality is different. Most B2B deals happen over Zoom with a stranger who knows the product maybe 20% as well as the product team, needs to pull in an SE for technical questions, and pivots away from hard ones. That stranger is not someone anyone trusts. Trust has not been established. It has to be earned, in both directions. ## Where AI AEs Actually Win Here is what the AI AE brings: - **Knows the product cold.** Every feature, integration, edge case, pricing scenario. No "I will check with the team." Buyers burned by reps who overpromise find AI precision more trustworthy. - **Answers every question directly.** No friction. No loop-ins. Friction kills deals. - **No quota pressure.** Human reps push. They create urgency. Sometimes they shade the truth because they need the number. AI AEs do not have those incentives. - **Does not make things up to close.** Not in general. ## Where Humans Still Win Humans build genuine rapport over time. They read rooms, navigate political complexity, sense when a champion is losing support. In high-ACV enterprise deals with long cycles and many stakeholders, great human AEs have an edge. But most B2B deals are not that. Most are mid-market or SMB, two to four people on the buying committee, 30 to 90 day cycle. For this volume, an AI AE that knows the product perfectly and answers every question accurately will outperform the average human rep. Not all the time. But more often than the trust objection suggests. ## The Real Question Is Familiarity Buyers saying they do not trust AI AEs are expressing unfamiliarity. That goes away fast. Every generation adapted: websites over door-to-door, e-commerce over catalogues, self-serve trials over scheduled demos. The buyers of 2026 already interact with AI in most parts of their lives. The mental model is shifting. ## What This Means Now The teams that win over the next 24 months are not debating whether buyers will trust AI AEs in theory. They are figuring out where AI AEs perform well right now, deploying them in those segments, and measuring actual outcomes. SaaStr data from 100,000+ AI SDR emails shows higher open rates, higher meeting rates, higher close rates. As long as the AI agent is really good, buyers do not mind. The trust objection is temporary comfort. The data will change the conversation. Worth noting: 81% of sales teams already use AI tools, and high performers using AI agents are 3.7x more likely to meet quota. Before you assume a human AE is inherently more trustworthy, ask: has that human actually earned your trust? Or did they just show up on Zoom and you gave them the benefit of the doubt because they were human? That benefit of the doubt is eroding. Fast.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Tech sector hits 9% of GDP, but jobs growth stalls

## Tech sector hits 9% of GDP, but jobs growth stalls Australia's tech sector contributes $248.5 billion to GDP, representing 8.9% of the national economy, according to new data from the Tech Council of Australia. The headline number sounds strong. The detail is messier. Direct tech (software companies, IT services, telcos, hardware) accounts for $126.2 billion, or 4.6% of GDP. That is up from $63.5 billion in 2015, but it has grown modestly over the past five years. The direct sector's GDP share actually dropped from 4.7% in 2021 to 4.6% now. The rest of the growth came from indirect tech: companies in finance, healthcare, retail, and construction using software and digital tools. That contribution more than doubled since 2021, from $55.9 billion to $122.3 billion. ### What this means for sales jobs The TCA targets 1.2 million tech jobs by 2030. Current employment sits at 980,000 workers (1 in 15 Australians). The math: they need to add 220,000 roles in five years. For sales professionals, the indirect tech growth matters more than the direct numbers. When a construction company adopts project management software or a healthcare provider deploys telehealth, someone sold that deal. Enterprise software sales, implementation services, and ongoing account management all follow. The report positions tech as Australia's most significant productivity contributor over the past decade. TCA chair Robyn Denholm (also Tesla's chair) and CEO Damian Kassabgi are lobbying Parliament this week to support the sector. ### The jobs reality Direct tech sector growth has slowed. Indirect adoption is accelerating. For AEs and SDRs, that means enterprise deals in traditional industries (finance, health, construction) remain the growth opportunity. The TCA is an advocacy body, not a hiring company. They do not have sales teams or comp data to report. But their 2030 target of 1.2 million tech jobs means roughly 44,000 new roles per year, many in sales and customer success. Comp data for these roles: SDR salaries in Australia range from $60k to $80k base with OTE of $80k to $100k. Enterprise AEs typically see $100k to $120k base with OTE of $160k to $200k. Senior AE roles can hit $140k base with OTE above $240k. The sector is worth nearly $250 billion. The jobs growth needs to catch up.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Google pauses Australia data centre plan over tax structure concerns

Google has paused a potential $20 billion data centre investment in Australia over concerns about tax structure, according to reports from the Australian Financial Review. The company is evaluating whether building significant local infrastructure would establish a permanent establishment in Australia, triggering higher tax obligations. Google currently pays a 20% effective tax rate in Australia through offshore service delivery structures. The standard corporate tax rate is 30%. In 2024, Google paid $83 million in Australian income tax on revenue primarily from advertising (76% of global revenue), cloud services (12%), and other segments. Total global revenue exceeded $307 billion. ## What this means for ANZ cloud sales The investment would have positioned Australia as a potential Asia-Pacific hub for AI and data centre infrastructure, directly competing with AWS's announced $20 billion Australian data centre spend over five years. Google Cloud already operates cloud regions in Sydney and Melbourne. The company maintains multiple subsea cables in the region but has not disclosed ANZ headcount or sales team size in public reports. Meetings between Google's VP of Global Infrastructure and Treasurer Jim Chalmers have occurred. A Google spokesperson stated the company has not requested tax incentives while emphasising prior infrastructure investments. ## The sales context For enterprise AEs selling cloud infrastructure in ANZ, this matters. Google's hesitation creates opportunity space for AWS and Microsoft Azure to position themselves as committed local players. The pause also signals how tax structure influences major infrastructure decisions, potentially affecting enterprise contract negotiations around data residency and local presence requirements. The timing mirrors Amazon cofounder Sergey Brin's move from California over proposed billionaire taxes, though the scale and context differ significantly. Google's last major Australian announcement was a $1 billion cloud and AI investment in 2021. No ANZ-specific CRO or VP Sales roles have been publicly disclosed in recent reports.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

AI SaaS Founders: Hire FDEs Before CSMs or Watch Deployment Kill You

# AI SaaS Founders: Hire FDEs Before CSMs or Watch Deployment Kill You Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr and former EchoSign CEO, has a framework for the FDE vs CSM hiring debate that cuts through the usual CS playbook. The question: should AI agent companies hire more Forward Deployed Engineers or Customer Success Managers? Lemkin's answer: it depends on where your bottleneck actually is. In AI B2B, deployment is the new constraint, not retention. ## The Real Diagnostic Hire FDEs first if: - Deals close but time-to-value is 60+ days - Customers train agents themselves and hit 40-50% of potential performance - You're seeing silent churn: customers sign, go quiet, disappear - NPS gets dragged down by "couldn't get it working" feedback Hire CSMs if: - Agents are already live and performing for most customers - Churn happens at renewal despite successful deployments - You have predictable, repeatable onboarding that doesn't require customisation - Most customers hit their goals in the first 30-60 days ## The Sequencing Play Lemkin's actual recommendation: don't choose. Sequence it. Get one strong FDE embedded with your top 3-5 customers. Document what they do. Systematise the training. Then hire CSMs to maintain those relationships at scale. The worst outcome: massively scaling CS before deployment is solved. You are just hiring people to manage unhappy customers. ## Why This Matters for ANZ Sales Teams This is the FDE vs CSM question reframed for AI products. Traditional SaaS let you scale CSMs early because onboarding was predictable. AI agent products have a deployment problem that looks like a retention problem. For sales teams selling AI tools: if your close rate is strong but your customers aren't going live, this is your signal. The quota stays the same whether customers deploy or not, but your comp next quarter depends on renewals. Lemkin built EchoSign to $100m ARR and sold to Adobe. He runs a $90m venture fund and the largest B2B/SaaS founder community globally through SaaStr. His take on this comes from seeing hundreds of companies make this exact mistake: scaling sales, then wondering why the metrics break. The framework is simple. The execution is not. But if you are selling AI SDR tools or any AI agent product, deployment velocity determines whether your patch stays viable.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

NVIDIA forecasts $1T revenue, Meta cuts 16,000 roles in comp rebalance

## NVIDIA's $1T Forecast Was Already Priced In Jensen Huang put a $1 trillion revenue forecast on the table at GTC. The stock moved less than 1%. That flat reaction tells you everything: NVIDIA did $215B last fiscal year, analysts already forecast mid-300s for next year, and the trillion-dollar number is a two-year round-up of consensus estimates. The real bet is capex investment at these levels continuing for four to five more years. When NVIDIA hits $600B in revenue, global capex spend behind it is probably north of $1.2T. Cumulative revenue of $10T over five to seven years is plausible, driven by inference running at scale. The risk worth naming: token consumption may grow 3,000x over five years, but if price per token falls 6x simultaneously, revenue growth is not linear. The bull case requires demand to outrun price compression at massive scale. So far, every data point says it is. Put the probability of something breaking at around 30%. ## Meta's 16,000 Layoffs Are Not What They Look Like Meta is cutting 16,000 roles out of 79,000, roughly 20% of its workforce. Coverage frames this as AI forcing downsizing. That misses what is actually happening: Meta does not have to lay off anybody. Operating margins are still in the 40s. Here is what is really driving this: you spent tens of billions on compute. The depreciation is coming. You do not have the operating cash flow to have both NVIDIA and people. Compute eats jobs. That is literally what is happening. The more important shift: companies are cutting not to shrink, but to restock. They do not need 20 engineers who know C++. They need eight who are genuinely elite at building with AI. They will pay twice the salary for half the headcount. This is a talent shuffle happening in real time, and it probably should be happening at every company regardless of growth rate. ## The One Question That Tells You If Someone Is Actually AI Fluent What commercial AI tool have you brought into your organisation this month? Not which tools they have read about. Not which demos they watched. What did they actually buy, configure, deploy, and put in front of their team in the last 30 days. Anyone on the bleeding edge has done this repeatedly. There are enough great products now that there is no excuse for any functional leader, sales, marketing, engineering, product, to not have evaluated and partially deployed at least one agentic tool recently. Of all even the best startups, maybe 30% of the management team meets this standard at best. In general interviews, it is single-digit percentages. The job that matters right now is not prompt engineer, that existed for about a year and is already gone. The job is agentic deployment expert: someone who can identify, test, deploy, and measure AI tooling at speed. ## What This Means for ANZ Sales Teams If your CRO cannot name an AI tool they shipped to the team this quarter, they are behind. If your comp plan still assumes 2021 headcount models, you are overpaying for underperformance. If your hiring brief says "rockstar AE," you are fishing in the wrong pond. The restock is happening now. Companies are cutting average performers and paying 2x for elite talent who can deploy, measure, and iterate with AI tooling. That is the new bar for quota-carrying roles in 2025.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Three Australian startups raise $161 million in one week

# Three Australian startups raise $161 million in one week Advanced Navigation led the week with a $158 million Series C from Airtree Ventures, Quadrant Private Equity, and the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC), which separately confirmed $50 million in preferred equity. The Sydney deeptech company builds positioning and navigation systems that operate without GPS, targeting vehicles, ships, and autonomous systems in environments where GPS is vulnerable to interference. MiAI Law and Deftbiotech accounted for the remaining $3 million, though specific round details were not disclosed. MiAI Law is building homegrown legal AI. Deftbiotech is working on health solutions, though sector specifics remain unclear. ## Market context: selective, not surging The $161 million week fits broader ANZ VC patterns. The market raised approximately $1.4 billion in the first ten weeks of Q1 2026, tracking toward $1.8-2.0 billion for the quarter. That is flat with Q1 2025 but still below 2022 peaks. Median deal size sits at $6.2 million as early-stage rounds slow. VC firms are backing fewer companies but writing bigger cheques for quality bets in AI, fintech, healthtech, climate tech, and SaaS. Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg Capital (recently closed a $650 million fund), AirTree Ventures, and Main Sequence Ventures dominate activity. Typical cheque sizes: $250K-$2M for seed, $10M-$30M+ for growth. ## What this means for sales teams Series C raises like Advanced Navigation typically precede hiring expansions, especially for enterprise sales roles. Deeptech companies moving into commercialisation need AEs who can sell complex, high-ACV solutions to government and enterprise buyers. Worth watching for ANZ sales hires in Q2. The broader funding environment remains tight. Portfolio companies report 77% have conducted layoffs, likely including sales teams. Runway pressures are real: 71% of Victorian startups have under 12 months of cash. If you are evaluating startup roles, ask about runway, burn rate, and what the hiring plan looks like if the next round does not close on schedule. Funding concentration in NSW (33%) and Victoria (37%) means most sales roles will be Sydney or Melbourne-based. Remote ANZ roles remain rare at early-stage companies. ## The AI narrative shift Eighty percent of Australian startups sense an AI bubble, yet they are pivoting pitches to investors around AI integration. Sales teams at these companies will be asked to sell AI features that may or may not deliver measurable ROI. Ask hard questions about product-market fit and whether AI is solving real buyer problems or just ticking VC boxes. IPO timelines are extending. Forty-seven percent of startups are targeting 5+ years to public markets, which means longer equity lockup periods and more uncertainty around stock option value. Factor that into comp expectations when evaluating offers from late-stage startups.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

SaaStr hits 140% of Q1 revenue with 1.25 sales humans, 20 AI agents

## The Numbers SaaStr hit 140% of Q1 2025 revenue this quarter with 1.25 humans in sales and 5 core AI GTM agents doing work that previously required 4+ people. One agent closed a $70,000 sponsorship deal with zero human involvement. The agents are touching and scheduling qualified meetings with 2x the number of prospects compared to last year's human team. ## What the Agents Actually Do The 5 core GTM agents handle: outbound sequencing, inbound qualification, meeting scheduling, lead reactivation, and Q&A. That last function matters more than it sounds. A human SDR who does not know an answer will guess, punt, or delay. The agent gives an accurate answer in seconds. The lead reactivation piece is worth noting. A meaningful percentage of new meetings are coming from leads the human team had written off. The agent reached back out. It worked. ## What Did Not Get Better The emails are good but not great. The best human sales execs at SaaStr still write better outreach than the AI agents on their best day. The agents hallucinate. Amelia, their Chief AI Officer, spends 30% of her time on agent management and error correction. Complex negotiations, custom sponsorships, relationship building: still require humans. SaaStr would hire another elite human sales exec tomorrow, specifically one who works well with AI agents rather than resenting them. ## The Real Story SaaStr's results are not just about AI agents being better than humans. The company repositioned itself around AI for GTM and caught the vibe coding wave. New sponsors (Salesforce, Replit, Vercel) came in because SaaStr was relevant to what they were building. The agents helped find them, nurture them, and in some cases close them. But the underlying interest was real. Product always matters. The agents scaled what was already working. ## What This Means for Sales Teams The comp math is straightforward: 5 AI agents cost a fraction of 4+ human salaries. The coverage math is clear: 2x the prospects touched. But the quality trade-off is real. Peak human performance still beats peak AI performance on complex deals. The lesson is not that AI replaces sales teams. The lesson is that 1.25 great humans plus well-trained agents is higher leverage than 4+ humans doing everything manually. The question for sales leaders: what are your humans doing that agents could handle at B- quality, freeing them for work that requires A+ human judgment? Worth noting: SaaStr contracted from 20+ employees to 3 humans plus 20+ AI agents over the past year. That is not typical scaling. That is deliberate headcount reduction powered by automation. The revenue grew. The team shrunk. Those are the numbers.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

NSW public sector pushes flexible work over pay for hard-to-fill roles

## The Policy NSW Premier's Department told state agencies to pitch flexible work conditions before offering skill shortage allowances for hard-to-fill roles. The allowance caps at $20k on top of base salary for permanent employees. The directive sits in new "Skills Shortage Allowance Implementation Guidelines" sent to agency heads. It's designed to fill positions where talent won't come at standard government rates. ## The Tension This is the same government that issued a workplace presence directive in August 2024 requiring staff to be in the office more. Transport for NSW goes to 50% hybrid from February 2026. Audit Office of NSW implements full policy by March 31, 2025. So agencies are told: bring people back to the office, but also sell flexibility when you can't fill roles at ticketed rates. ## What Flexibility Actually Means NSW Public Service Commission guidance covers part-time, job sharing, compressed hours, and remote work. No eligibility waiting periods. Formal proposals get discussed within 21 days. The framework covers 400,000+ public servants across NSW and some ACT overlap. This is not about B2B sales teams: it is audit, transport, administration roles. ## The Market Context Public sector employers are competing with private companies that already offer hybrid work. Fair Work Act expansions (2023-2026) strengthened employee rights to flexible arrangements across ANZ. The strategy: use flexibility as a retention and attraction tool when budgets won't stretch to match private sector comp. It is a non-monetary benefit play when the money is not there. ## Why This Matters If you are hiring in ANZ and comp is tight, this is the playbook: flexibility before cash. Public sector is running this experiment at scale. Watch what works and what does not. That data will matter when your CFO says no to raising OTE but yes to hybrid work. The tension between office mandates and flexible work as a hiring tool is not unique to government. Every company trying to fill roles below market rate is running some version of this play.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Google's AI opt-out for search: publishers call it too little, too late

Google announced it will explore letting websites opt out of its AI search features like AI Overviews and AI Mode. The move follows pressure from the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which wants publishers to control AI participation without losing traditional search visibility. Publishers are skeptical. Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, called it a response to "sustained regulatory pressure," not voluntary cooperation. The issue: Google's AI summaries pull content without sending traffic back to the source. Publishers need clicks to fund content creation. AI Overviews cut that pipeline. The proposal is light on substance. Google says it is "exploring updates" for site-wide and page-level opt-outs but has not shared implementation timelines, technical requirements, or how accessible the controls will be. Paul Bannister, CRO at Raptive, noted Google could separate its crawler systems "by tomorrow" but chooses not to because it provides competitive advantage. ## What this means for B2B sales teams If you rely on organic search for pipeline, watch this closely. Google's AI features are already changing how buyers research solutions. AI Overviews surface answers without sending users to your site. That means fewer inbound leads from content marketing and SEO investment. For sales orgs investing in content to drive top-of-funnel traffic: the ROI equation just shifted. If Google strips attribution and clicks, your content becomes free training data for AI that competes with your own lead gen. The opt-out might help, but only if it actually ships and works as promised. Right now, it is a proposal without details. If your pipeline depends on search visibility, you need a backup plan that does not assume Google will keep sending traffic your way.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

ServiceNow's $10B GTM engine: how they unified sales, CS, and partners

ServiceNow built a $10B revenue engine by doing what most enterprise software companies talk about but rarely execute: they actually unified their GTM motion. Paul Fipps, President of Global Customer Operations, runs sales, customer success, field marketing, and partners as one integrated team. The reason? He watched too many customers sign deals on Friday and meet an entirely new team on Monday. That handoff problem kills expansion pipeline before it starts. The company tracks customer health daily, not quarterly. Fipps blocks calendar time every week for direct customer conversations and responds within 24 hours. When asked how he would spot churn without dashboards, he pointed to usage patterns and executive engagement, not vanity metrics. ServiceNow's growth model leans heavily on expansion. They added 603 customers spending $5M+ annually in the latest quarter, up 20% YoY, averaging $14.7M per customer. Q4 saw 244 deals over $1M in net-new ACV. The business runs on large customers getting larger, not new logo hunting. On AI, Fipps shared a telling story: a CIO cancelled 900 AI pilots because none drove measurable ROI. ServiceNow's approach embeds agentic AI inside existing workflows instead of building standalone tools. Running their own platform, they generated $335M in annualized productivity gains across their 10,000-person GTM organisation. The company integrated Claude into GTM workflows, cutting account planning from days to minutes. They shifted from six-month product releases to monthly cycles, influenced by Fipps' experience running digital products at Under Armour, where he oversaw a 300 million-member connected fitness ecosystem. For GTM leaders, the takeaway is structural: ServiceNow eliminated organisational seams that create customer friction. Sales does not hand off to CS. Field marketing does not operate separately. Partners are not an afterthought. One motion, one customer view, daily health monitoring. Fipps' advice for building world-class GTM: put the best people in the right seats. Straightforward, but ServiceNow's results suggest they actually do it. Worth noting: no specific comp details emerged, but ServiceNow's scale and enterprise focus suggest competitive enterprise AE and AM packages. The company prioritises existing customer expansion over new territory development, which shapes quota structure and territory design.

Sales Hacker
2 months ago
News

Denholm review targets $4.6bn R&D tax scheme, removes $150m cap

## The Numbers The Strategic Examination of Research and Development (SERD) targets Australia's $4.6 billion annual R&D Tax Incentive scheme. Key proposal: remove the $150 million cap and kill the intensity thresholds. The review, chaired by Tesla's Robyn Denholm and released in March 2026, responds to a decade of declining business R&D investment. Panel included former Chief Scientist Ian Chubb, burns treatment pioneer Fiona Wood, and Kate Cornick. ## What Changes The R&D Tax Incentive reforms aim to: - Remove the $150 million annual cap - Simplify administration (current system is brutal) - Eliminate intensity thresholds - Make Australia competitive for multinational R&D spend The report identifies six "National Innovation Pillars": agriculture/food, defence, environment/energy, health/medical, resources, and technology. These sectors get priority for funding and incentives. Other recommendations: increase foundational research funding, standardise grant processes, reform superannuation rules for venture capital, and use the National Reconstruction Fund as a commercialisation vehicle. ## What This Means For sales teams at R&D-intensive businesses: this could expand your addressable market in ANZ. The reforms target companies that hit the current $150 million cap, typically large tech firms and multinationals. Business Council of Australia CEO Bran Black backs the RDTI changes. Cites Mandala research: $5 economic value per $1 spent. Universities Australia and the Australian Academy of Science (president Chennupati Jagadish) want 2026-27 Budget action. The review proposes a National Innovation Council reporting to the Prime Minister, suggesting government is serious about implementation. ## Reality Check The report has 20 recommendations across six pillars. Political, budgetary, and practical realities will determine what actually ships. No timeline confirmed for implementation. Worth watching: the 2026-27 Budget for specific funding commitments. Stakeholders are pushing for urgent action to reverse Australia's R&D decline and build competitiveness against global markets. Whether that translates to actual policy changes remains to be seen.

Startup Daily
2 months ago
News

60% of sales teams ignore enterprise AI licenses, use personal accounts instead

## The Enterprise AI Adoption Gap Nobody Talks About Larridin CEO Russ Laridan presented measurement data from their Scout platform at SaaStr AI Day that should make every VP of Sales uncomfortable. The workforce AI proficiency company tracks actual AI usage across enterprise sales teams, and the numbers expose a gap between procurement and reality. ## What The Data Shows **60% of employees with enterprise AI licenses still use personal accounts.** You negotiated the Claude Enterprise deal. You rolled out ChatGPT Teams. You ran training sessions. Most of your team logged into their personal account anyway. Zero data capture, zero ability to measure what works, six figures on tooling with no visibility. **Employees have found 5-6x more AI tools than IT sanctioned.** Larridin's internal team of 10 people had six different AI notetakers running. Russ joined a customer call early and counted four competing bots before any humans showed up. Most companies treat this as compliance risk. Wrong frame. Your best reps are running experiments for free. The question is not how to lock it down, it is how to capture what they are learning. **Most AI usage is glorified search.** When Larridin measured proficiency, not just adoption, a significant chunk of activity was sports scores and random lookups. Without distinguishing between a rep using AI to build custom pitch decks and a rep asking Claude what time dinner is, you have no idea if your AI investment generates pipeline or just burns tokens. ## The Real Opportunity **AI will not make your best reps much better. It will make your worst reps less bad.** That matters more. Every sales leader knows the feeling of reviewing a pile of leads and realizing reps just never followed up. Not your A-players. Your average and below-average ones. AI will not turn a C-minus rep into an A-player, but it will turn them into a B. Across a 500-person sales org, compressing that distribution and raising the floor on follow-up quality is a bigger revenue lever than most founders consider. Larridin's Utilization × Proficiency × Value Framework measures who uses AI tools, how well they use them, and what business value gets generated. Their research across 38,000+ engineers shows acceptance rates are misleading metrics for measuring AI adoption success. This aligns with broader market data: 81% of sales teams are experimenting with or fully implementing AI, but only 28% of revenue leaders report AI actually improves revenue-driving performance. One-third of sales ops professionals cite lack of resources or insufficient training as adoption hurdles. Only 35% of sales professionals trust their organisation's data accuracy. ## What This Means For Sales Leaders Stop saying "shadow AI." It tells your best people you do not trust them. At a startup, your employees literally cannot win if the company does not win. The incentives are aligned. Treat tool discovery like a free R&D programme. Bring the good tools into the fold, kill the duplicates, turn what one rep figured out into a playbook for everyone. The gap between AI investment and AI impact is measurement. You need instrumentation that shows which tools drive pipeline, which reps use them effectively, and where you are lighting money on fire. Without that visibility, you are flying blind on your biggest productivity bet.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

Advanced Navigation raises $158M Series C, NRFC backs defence tech expansion

## The Numbers Advanced Navigation closed a $158 million Series C led by Airtree Ventures, with Quadrant Private Equity participating. The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation separately committed $50 million in preferred equity. Total raised to date: $92.66 million historically, plus this round. FY2024 revenue: $21.85 million. EBITDA: negative $14.27 million. The company is scaling, not profitable yet. ## What They Sell Inertial navigation systems, fibre optic gyroscopes, and GNSS tech for GPS-denied environments. Core customers: defence contractors including Rheinmetall, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon. This is B2B enterprise sales, long cycles, high deal values. CEO Chris Shaw cited GPS vulnerability as the growth driver. GPS jamming incidents up 67% in 2025, spoofing attacks up 193%. Over 1,000 vessels affected near Iran last week. A full GPS outage could cost $1 billion daily globally. ## Sales Structure Chief Revenue Officer Christopher McNamara leads revenue. Recent hires include Michelle Toscan as Head of APAC (December 2025) to drive sovereign positioning, navigation and timing sales. Stephen Fujiwara handles US defence program development. No disclosed team size, but the vertically integrated operation runs facilities across Australia plus a Colorado office. Direct B2B model, selling to defence primes and research partners like CSIRO and RMIT. ## Market Context Australian manufacturer competing globally in resilient navigation tech. Recent wins: US Army testing success in February 2026. The company positions as critical infrastructure for autonomous systems in contested environments, where GPS interference is tactical, not theoretical. Series C usually means expansion hiring. Worth watching for AE and technical sales additions in defence verticals, particularly APAC and US markets. Defence sales cycles are long, but once you are in with primes, the book of business compounds. ## The Read Growing revenue, burning cash, raising capital to scale. Standard deep-tech trajectory. The defence tech market is hot, governments are spending, and GPS vulnerability is a real problem with budget behind it. If you are selling into defence or critical infrastructure, this is a signal on where procurement dollars are flowing.

SmartCompany
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